#the non sequitors about their quest

[elsewhereuniversity]

Mellow was reading a murder mystery when the knights crashed through the door to her tower. She closed the book and listened to the voices on the stairwell, smiling when she heard the tone: giddy, drunk on relief, the kind of dazed wonder that only comes after the adrenaline stops. She recognized one- Magpie, if she wasn’t mistaken. 

Her suspicion was confirmed when the pair stumbled through her door, soaked to the skin, dripping what she sincerely hoped was water onto the floor. Magpie was all in plate armor, except her torso was bare, which seemed to defeat the purpose somewhat. The other girl, unfamiliar, was dressed in what appeared to be a bathrobe, and was looking around with undisguised suspicion. Mellow smiled, did her level best to appear nonthreatening.

“Magpie, you’re back,” she said lightly. “I’d say it’s good to see you again, but if you’ve found me, that only means one thing.”

Magpie’s smile turned crooked, a familiar mixture of bashfulness and pride on her face (like a hundred other knights before).

Mellow didn’t entirely understand how it worked. She wasn’t sure if it was a curse or a gift. She didn’t even really remember what she was before she became… well, whatever it was that she was now. She distantly remembered climbing the tower stairs, but even that was foggy, and before that… well, just fog, and the distant sound of the Unsea.

Mellow didn’t try to remember things very often.

But, for better or for worse, people found their way to her tower. Not just people- knights, those recently returned from their quests. And never whole ones. If she was lucky, she got people like Magpie, who would bear scars with pride. If she was unlucky, she’d be sitting with someone with less fingers than expected, or short an eye. The kinds of wounds that even she couldn’t fix, just take the pain away.

The worst ones were the silent ones, or the crying ones. The ones that told her through words or otherwise that dear ones hadn’t made it back, or that they were not as they were. 

“How did we get here?” asked the newcomer, jolting Mellow back to the present. Her suspicion was fading into curiosity as she looked around, peering out the window. “I swear, I’ve gone past here a hundred times, and this wasn’t here.”

“Beats me, love,” Mellow said, smiling wryly. “From what I understand, it won’t be here unless you’re, ah…" 

"Oh.” The girl looked out the window to the swirling fog, then asked, “Are you a ghost?”

“Lark!” Magpie looked mortified. Mellow just laughed.

“Not on my good days.” She looked at her hand in spite of herself, a little self conscious. She shouldn’t have worried- you could barely see the floor through it. 

“And on bad days?” Lark asked with genuine interest. Magpie looked about to die of embarrassment.

“On bad days, you could read a book through me,” Mellow admitted cheerfully. “But enough about me. What happened?”

The two women shared a look, and having met hundreds of knights over the years, Mellow could read the where to begin without trying.

“Let me put it this way,” she said, pulling two chairs to the floor and gesturing for them to sit. “Where are you hurt?”

Magpie immediately held out her right arm, and Mellow winced. There were a couple of shallow gashes along her arm. Something twinkled in the longest one- glass, she realized.

“What did you do, punch a window?” she asked sardonically. 

“Something like that,” Lark said, and held up her left arm. It was similarly injured- actually. Looking between the two of them, the cuts were exactly the same size, same length- just mirrored. Mellow raised her eyebrows.

“All right,” she said, “I’ll admit I haven’t seen that very often.”

It was only the work of several minutes to retrieve the shards from the girls’ arms. The unsettling thing was that when the matching shards were closer together, they vibrated and then snapped together into one. Mellow did her level best not to think too hard about it, particularly after hearing the story- something about a trap, a thrilling duel between Magpie and some-random-fae-or-another, and a particularly belligerent library book with the solution to escaping. After hearing about the tome’s quest, Mellow supposed she couldn’t blame them for trying a more, uh, direct way out.

“But,” Lark said brightly, “I did find Escher.”

“What?” Mellow asked, confused.

“Escher. He’s been gone for like, two years now. Turns out there was some to-do about his comp sci project, and one thing led to another, so he got thrown in there same as me.” Lark held up her other arm, where the wrist was surrounded by a ring of bruises. “After I was taken prisoner by the frogs, we managed to set the place on fire and escape. He’s fine.”

“The- I’m sorry, where do frogs come in here?” Mellow pulled a bottle from the top shelf, squinted at it, added a few drops to the bowl of water she was carrying, and brought it over to Lark’s chair. 

“It’s kind of a complicated story,” Lark admitted.

“I’ll say,” Magpie said, glaring at Lark. “You didn’t tell me about any frogs.”

“It’s been a weird couple of days,” Lark said defensively. Mellow grinned, wetting a clean cloth and gently dabbing the liquid on the worst scratch, her hands as gentle as she could make them. Despite that, Lark winced.

“I’d say so,” Mellow said, talking to distract, moving onto the second one. “There are frogs in a mirror?”

“I mean, not really the mirror,” Lark said, watching with interest as the first cut slowly healed, leaving a pink line of new scar. “The mirror was the portal, not literally where I was. Admittedly, I was put in a gladiator’s arena to fight my own reflection to the death, but I think that’s just a coincidence. Also, to be clear they weren’t really frogs, they were… frog-like.”

She didn’t elaborate, and after seeing the shadow cross her face Mellow was wise enough not to ask her to. The relief was clearly wearing off, and Lark looked like she wanted nothing more than to dry off and go to bed. She moved on to Magpie, doing her best to make small talk, smiling, keeping her hands gentle. This is what she was good at. 

As the last cut sealed shut, and Mellow tipped the faintly-pink water down the drain, Lark sighed and got to her feet. Mellow couldn’t help but notice she had no reflection in the mirror.

“Well, I’d love to stay and chat, but unfortunately I’ve missed half my midterms and I need to make them up tomorrow, so I really need to sleep.”

“Skip physics,” Magpie said, but she was yawning as well.

“Out,” Mellow said, handing each of them a small bag. “Freely given,” she clarified. “Just like my aid.”

Lark visibly relaxed, and Mellow kicked herself for not setting her at ease earlier. “What is it?”

“Tea,” Mellow said. “Don’t waste it. It’s my favorite.”

“Are you sure you don’t want it?” Lark asked. Mellow did her best to keep her smile light.

“Don’t drink much tea these days,” she said, and out of habit looked down at her hands. She could distinctly see the floorboards now through them. She closed them into fists, tucked them behind her back- don’t scare her, don’t unnerve her. This is a safe place, healing and kind words and careful hands. 

“We should go,” Magpie said into the awkward pause. “Come on, Lark.”

They were at the door to the room when Lark turned around, narrowing her eyes in that quizzical way that Mellow had learned meant she was about to ask a question that Magpie would cringe at.

“I have one more question,” she said. “The stairs, they end here.”

“Yes,” Mellow agreed.

“But if this is the highest room,” Lark said, cocking her head to the side, “Who keeps the light lit?”

The sharpest ones generally did ask. Mellow thought maybe she had asked someone once, the day she had entered the lighthouse, beckoned by the steady glow of the beacon at the top. She didn’t remember who, or where they had gone. 

“I couldn’t say for sure,” she began. She paused, looking at the two knights who she sincerely hoped she would never see again (for the right reasons, of course.), at her careful, gentle, see-through hands.

“But do you know? I think it’s me.”

-Bean

[octarine-wizzard]

So I really, really like Miitopia

If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s like a streamlined RPG where you create characters and adventure through a wacky story, except all the NPCs and, if you prefer, your party members are all Miis made by other people, which usually means you’ll have a crazy mashup of pop culture references populating your game.

I made my Boo and I along with two of my OCs for my party so far, and now I’m going to dump some screencaps for you to try to hard-sell this game, because it’s the most fun I’ve had in a single player romp in a long, long time.

The story is pretty basic, if weird - A dark lord invades the land and steals faces off the poor Miis, putting them onto monsters (for shits and giggles, I guess). When you fight the monsters, you get their face back and they are restored.

...Like I said, the best part of this game is the random Miis you get as NPCs. Generally you can change the important ones, like the dark lord here, but I giggled way too hard when a Reaper (Overwatch) face popped up...

...especially when one of the random villagers in my first town was Mercy.

And McCree was a gourmet cook. Sure, why not!

You can create your other party members, so of course Boo is the warrior to my mage <3 You can also form (platonic) relationships in this game, and those relationships can boost you in battle. For better or for worse, it turns out, since Miis can also fight or get jealous.

Miis also have their own personalities (one of like, 6 or 7 types I think?) that affect their abilities in battle, what foods they like, and other things.

They also talk back and forth, and it’s kind of like dialogue in Oblivion, where there are several statements that can sort of pair together, but often end up as weird non-sequitors, but the tone of this game handles those really well. I’ve had some genuinely hilarious mini-interactions between quests.

It’s hard not to get invested in these guys is what I’m saying.

But once again, the NPC Miis are SO AMAZING LIKE. WOW. I didn’t think I’d love them as much as I do

PETER GRIFFIN, THE FAT KING

LIKE ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Also, one of those king’s guards is Evil Morty.

Zoidberg and Toon Link battling it out for Princess Marceline’s affections.

It was hard for me to capture but Zoidberg even fucking crab-walks like. How is that so perfect???

I also couldn’t help but fangirl over a few of my own characters where possible.

^ V. accurate representation of any time I talk about Valerin.

There’s also buying armor and upgrading weapons and the like, though it’s a bit of an odd (but not bad) system.

I mean, clerics use hammers, right...?

Y’know just a little.

What really gets me is that it really feels like the characters give a damn about each other, which is surprisingly rare for an RPG. I’m barely scratching the surface of the game even many hours in, yet my Miis are all such good friends that they are contstantly praising, showing off to, and assisting one another in battle.

The characters are completely open blank slates on purpose, yet the way they interact is more personal and deep than any other RPG I have ever played. Yes, including Persona, where half the game is developing relationships with other characters. Having them REALLY interact like friends both in and out of battles makes all the difference. Why has no one done this sooner!?

My point is, I really really really like this game. It’s a beautiful blend of RPG and relationship sim, and I’m not even to the real meat of the game yet. I genuinely think this game deserves a chance, and the more people that give Miitopia a go, the more likely Nintendo is to make something this great again.